


i waited for your heart to melt

by marmvg



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Excessive Cursing, lewd staring, the little things that make america america amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmvg/pseuds/marmvg
Summary: "Sweeney scoffs, laughing bitterly at the sky. If Shadow didn’t want Laura after Ibis and Jacquel worked their magic, he still wouldn’t want her after a quick spray tan behind the dumpsters of a Duane Reade. Shadow never cared how pretty Laura looked at the end of it all, anyway. He only cared how ugly her cruel beating heart was.The irony, that it began changing only once it stopped pumping in her chest."Prompt:  "You don't look so bad" extra points for jacket sharing





	i waited for your heart to melt

The stench of rot and desperation ripens with the summer heat. Even with the cab’s windows cracked open and his nose pinched between his fingers, Sweeney can’t escape Laura’s reek.  If he closed the partition it would help tremendously, he’s sure, but sliding it shut would mean isolating himself from the dead wife and the cabbie. He’ll be damned if he affords them the opportunity to plot against him and run away with his coin because of a little smell.

So the partition stays open, and the windows do too, and Sweeney battles against his gag reflex when the wind blows the evidence of a corpse up his nostrils.

“Where’s that fucking mortician with the spray tan when you need him,” Laura grumbles. She’s glaring at her reflection in the visor mirror, tracing spindly fingers against the gray of her cheeks. Her skin wrinkles like tissue paper where she touches it.

“Passed by a tanning salon ‘bout 69 miles back,” Sweeney muses. He watches Laura’s lifeless eyes narrow in the mirror. “Could have made a stop there. Got in one of them sunbeds….”

Laura slams the visor shut. The force of her hand makes a dent in the roof. From the driver’s seat, Salim makes a choking sound but doesn’t comment.

“Oh, but that would make my job too easy for you, wouldn’t it?” Sweeney continues. “Melt you straight to the bone lickety-split. I wouldn’t have to ride bitch with lover boy and the Reaper’s strong-arm, waiting until Horus’ right eye fillets ya-”

“Can you shut the fuck up?” Laura snaps. Her voice is raspy now, drier with every second her vocal cords disintegrate. It’s unfortunately, undeniably sexy. “I’ll tie your lips into a knot if I hear one more time how Helios is going to shoot flames up my ass for not giving you your fucking penny.”

Sweeney balks at her ignorance. “If it were a penny I’m after I’d cash in your last measly paycheck, Dead Wife.”

Ignoring him, she kicks her legs up onto the cab’s dashboard and leans back in her seat. A waft of decay hits Sweeney in the face. “We need to stop at a drugstore,” Laura declares. “I need to buy shit.”

Salim nods his ascent without question. “We will take the next exit and ask where to find one.”

“And what money will you be buying this shit with?” asks Sweeney.

“You pull cash out of your dick, right?” Laura turns to him with a slimy smile. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

“Oh no, Dead Wife. You’ve taken enough from me.”

“Not your life,” she reminds him. “But I could kill you with one punch to the chest if I wanted.”

Sweeney weighs his options: spare his pride and lose his life, or hand over some coins with his tail between his legs. Laura’s boney fingers dig into the back of her seat where she grips it. The worn leather tears, stuffing popping out of the casing and springs poking out of the confines. Salim makes the nearest exit with a strangled noise, glancing to where Laura carelessly vandalizes his car.

Sparing the poor driver further agony, Sweeney holds his hands in the air. “Fine, you greedy little-”

Laura tears the entire shoulder of her seat off easy as a piece of bread.

Without another word, Sweeney plucks coin after coin from nothing, tossing them at Laura who catches them with ungodly agility.

Despite driving them into the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowhere, Salim manages to locate a Duane Reade Laura deems worthy. They park in its painfully suburban lot, and Sweeney is far too aware of how out of place the three of them look in white bread America; the blazing red Irishman, the Muslim cab driver, and the dead girl with flies swarming her like their queen ambling out of a New York City taxi.

There’s no one around to see them besides the drunk draped across the hood of his Chevy, but Sweeney finds himself anxiously swatting pests away from Laura anyway.

She shoots him an embarrassed but grateful attempt at a smile.

“I won’t be longer than 30 minutes,” she tells them. “If I am… I don’t know, come looking for me like you care or something.”

“We do care,” Salim assures her.

“Of course,” tacks on Sweeney, “you’re carrying all my damned luck.”

It takes less than twenty minutes for Laura to complete her transaction, but when she does, she comes out carrying what must be half the beauty aisle.

“Christ, how much of my money did you spend?” asks Sweeney.

Laura doesn’t bother answering him. Instead, she jerks her head to where the dumpsters sit in the shadows, signaling for him and Salim to follow. Once hidden in the shade, she empties the contents of her bags on the asphalt and begins peeling off her clothes. Sweeney doesn’t pretend to tear his eyes away from her naked tits. If Laura notices, she doesn’t care.

Respectfully, Salim keeps his eyes averted and toys with a tube of mascara from her purchases.

Laura throws her thinning hair into a ponytail while Sweeney watches her, picking up the new hair net she bought and tucking away her straggly strands. “Open that.” She points to a metal can at Sweeney’s feet.

Grumbling and grimacing, he picks it up. The label reads _Quicktan: Body Bronzer_. “What the hell is this for?”

Laura is aggravatingly silent as she stands bare before them, hands set firmly on her hips. She stares straight ahead, over their shoulders, at the cars driving by in the distance. Flies buzz around her in a filthy, vibrating halo.

“We’ll be seeing Shadow soon.” She says it casually, as she does everything, but there is a heaviness in her words that only bears its weight when she mentions her husband.

Sweeney tosses the can between his hands, waiting for Laura to say more. She doesn’t.

“So, you want to look pretty for him, is that it?” he asks. There’s a twinge of something nasty in the pit of Sweeney’s stomach that he doesn’t care to explain. “You made us waste time, go out of our way, so you can put on some makeup for your ex-husband?”

“He’s _not_ my ex.”

“He’s not _not_ your ex!”

“I don’t care what you have to say, alright? I look like shit and I smell like shit, and I don’t want anyone to see me this way. Especially him.”

Sweeney scoffs, laughing bitterly at the sky. If Shadow didn’t want Laura after Ibis and Jacquel worked their magic, he still wouldn’t want her after a quick spray tan behind the dumpsters of a Duane Reade. Shadow never cared how pretty Laura looked at the end of it all, anyway. He only cared how ugly her cruel beating heart was.

The irony, that it began changing only once it stopped pumping in her chest.

“So are you going to help me spray this crap on?” asks Laura. “Or did I spend all your gold for nothing?”

It takes thirty minutes and three cans of self tanner to erase the gray from Laura’s skin. When the process is complete, she looks more like an aging carrot than a human, but certainly less like death. While she waits for it to dry, she applies her new makeup, painting her face back to life.

Just barely, Sweeney can picture how breathtaking she must have been before death. Nothing shining like the sun or moving like the ocean, but dark and rolling, fog creeping from the bay. Something for men at sea to lose themselves in.

“You can turn around, Salim.”

Fully dressed now, Laura unwraps her hair from the towel, letting it tumble over her shoulders. The tan is already faded from where her arm is stitched back to her body and she pokes at it gently, trying desperately to tamp down her distress at the sight.

It must be the will of a kinder god that compels Sweeney to shrug out of his denim jacket, huffing all the while, and hand it over to her. Confused, Laura accepts it, pulling it on over her flimsy racerback.

“You don’t look so bad,” Sweeney offers.

Laura sounds thoroughly pissed when she thanks him.

“But your attitude could use a fucking makeover too.”


End file.
